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This is an archive of walks done by the Saturday Walker's Club. You should only need to use this page if the SWC website is down.

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Wednesday, 3 August 2016

Midweek Day Walk - Saunderton Circular via West Wycombe

Saunderton Circular via West Wycombe

The Chilterns with wooded forests, Hughenden Manor (NT), West Wycombe Caves (of Hellfire club fame) then finishing with a short ridge walk

Book 2 Walk 3

Length : 16 km or 10 miles

Toughness : 4 out of 10

Getting there : Catch the 9:43 am Bicester North train from London Marylebone to Saunderton

Meeting point : Saunderton Station at 10:24

Tickets : Buy a cheap day return to Saunderton

Brief Description

Trains to Saunderton are hourly and with over two hours to the Le De Spencer Arms (where some may wish to lunch at) I've gone for an earlier train on this occasion.
NT members may like to bring their membership cards if planning to visit the Manor.
If it's awfully hot, walkers may like to make a mid afternoon stop at the Hellfire Caves for an ice cream or even a visit to the caves themselves.
As ever, you may find full details of this walk here and a the latest pdf here.

Suggested Tea stops

Map

Return train times

Trains return from Saunderton at the following times 16:26 | 16:50 | 17:26 | 18:26 journey time is about 45 minutes. (If you have a long wait, the Golden Cross provides beverages and has a small garden at the rear)

10 comments:

Anonymous, if you have a Network Rail Card, then that doesn't work so well during weekdays. To summarise, the fare for this train is £14.40 and a train one hour later is £13.00.The same tickets for both times at the weekend is £9.50.

Please be more mindful of those who do not have the luxury of free or near-free travel, if you want to be fair, keep your walk numbers up and attract new blood. The difference in the Cheap Day RETURN tickets - comparing the 9.43 and 10.43 trains - is £7, £20.10 compared to £13.25. For Network Carders £7 is not a tiny amount. The pub serves lunch until 3pm so the later train would have been more sensible. It is also a relatively short walk. I appreciate that posting is not an easy job, but the point about Network cards has been made by others in the past. Thanks.

Expensive walks also encourage 'unoficial', unposted mid-week walks, leading to cliques and reducing the often modest 'official' walk numbers further, and who wants that? Second that comment about time and effort, and realise the antics of Southern hampers you, Arthur.

I'd like to apologise for misquoting the fares to Saunderton.I had wrongly assumed that the cost of a return fare was just slightly above that of a single.

As you know, I try to post a varied range of walks on Wednesdays and quite a few have started before 10:00 am e.g. when there is a promo offer like SWT's current offer, or the return fare is not excessively above £10 (where a Network Card attracts little discount) and I will continue to do so when I feel it's appropriate.

This weeks walk is to, what I believe is, a particularly nice section of the Chilterns and involves a round trip railway journey of 80+ miles.

I know that some walkers will always be discouraged by some walks. The walks will be too long, too short, too hilly, too flat, too near London, too far from London, too late starting, too early starting, too expensive to get to and so forth.

So here's a challenge to the anonymous folk who've talked the talk, why not post the walk?Get in touch with me (arthur at quitenear.me ) with a mid-week date or dates you'd like to post on and we'll make sure you're set up on blogger and the date or dates you wish to post on are kept free for you to indulge us with your offerings.

Train FaresWe tend to loose track (if you pardon the pun) on offers that the various train companies offer.However I've just taken a peek at Chiltern Railways site and there are offers to be had where groups of three get a good discount (railcards make no difference)I know this is a little late for tomorrow, but three could have travelled to Saunderton for £39-75 (details Here )I've just re-read the walks notes re the lunchtime Pub and this is what they say ..."The recommended pub lunchtime stop is Le De Spencer's Arms (tel 01494 535317), Downley Common 9km from the start of the walk, which serves food from 12 to 2pm daily. However you are strongly advised to phone through beforehand, on occasions they stop serving lunch much earlier." Hence my note about calling them at the start of the walk

Just n=6 chaps on today's walk, no ladies. Weather w=overcast-in-the-morning-sunny-and warm-in-the-afternoon-with-cooling-breezeIn other words, near perfect summer walking weather. Without some ladies to keep us in check, the six of us managed to become separated and semi-lost in Bradenham Woods, leaving 3 of us to take the long route to Hughenden Manor, where one of us stopped to do some sightseeing. That left two to head for the pub, where me met one who had taken the direct route to the pub to quench his thirst. A good pub lunch was enjoyed by the three of us, before we were collected by our sightseeing colleague from Hughenden (keep up at the back) for our afternoon leg. Now in a group of four, we set out in warm sunshine, tempered by a cooling breeze. The climb up to the Dashwood Mausoleum was challenging for us oldies, but the young swain in our company (who's rail tickets cost £ 12 more than their older colleagues) sportingly resuscitated the senior railcard holders who, now turbo-charged, sped off on the long downhill track back to Saunderton. Train times left us plenty of time to enjoy a cuppa or pint in the garden of the Golden Cross, before the four of us caught the 4-26 pm train back to London.After some texting we located walker No 5 who was enjoying a visit to an exhibition at Hughenden Manor, but no-one knows what happened to No 6 - please come in, your time is up.An enjoyable day for those who made it safely back to Saunderton.

On a footnote to Marcos's report, we found ourselves sat near to some Southbank Walkers on the outbound train. They were doing a Princess Ris to Great Miss walk and did try to encourage us to join them. Had we succumbed, we would have been able to say n=0 took part in this SWC midweeker!AD